"Twists of fate, love and humour, perseverance and, finally, a philosophical outlook- his story has it all." - Sarah Hampson.(click photo to enlarge) From the Globe and Mail article "You couldn't write this script" published July 19, 2010.From the Grand Poobah: "A young lady with excellent taste". (click to enlarge)
"Ever since I was a child messing around with a terrible paint set from K-mart, I have been obsessed with controlling pigment suspended in water. Now I paint with divine, hand-made watercolors from Holland along with brushes ranging from high-end to dirt cheap, but the obsession remains..." - from Kelly Eddington's artist statement. To read more and see her truly wonderful watercolors, visit Kelly Eddington's Website and Gallery.

"Veni. Vedi. Vici"Roger Ebert accepts the Person Of The Year award with his wife, Chaz, at the Webby Awards in New York June 14, 2010. Jimmy Fallon presenter.From the Big Poobah: Our club secretary Marie Haws, who pokes here and there more than a dentist, came up with a list of the geographical locations of Club members. Most are in the U.S. and Canada, as expected, but we also have members in 40 other nations! This reflects my website's overall readership; over the last 12 months, 25% of all visitors have been non-U.S.Foreign: Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, Brazil, Iceland, Ireland, Wales, England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Demark, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Greece, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, India, China, Japan, Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand.

O'Rourke's was our stage, and we displayed our personas there nightly. It was a shabby street-corner tavern on a dicey stretch of North Avenue, a block after Chicago's Old Town stopped being a tourist haven. In its early days it was heated by a wood-burning pot-bellied stove, and ice formed on the insides of the windows. One night a kid from the street barged in, whacked a customer in the front booth with a baseball bat, and ran out again. When a roomer who lived upstairs died, his body was discovered when maggots started to drop through the ceiling. A man nobody knew was shot dead one night out in back. From the day it opened on December 30, 1966 until the day I stopped drinking in 1979, I drank there more or less every night when I was in town. So did a lot of people.

I met John McHugh in the autumn of 1966, when I was a cub reporter on the Sun-Times and he was a rewrite man, two years my senior, on the Chicago Daily News. We are still best friends. He worked the overnight shift, and among his duties was taking calls from readers.

After midnight, they wanted to settle bets. "And what do you say?" McHugh would ask. He would listen, and then reply,

"You're 100% correct. Put the other guy on." Pause. "And what do you say?" Pause. "You're 100% correct." If he was asked for his name, he said, "John T. Greatest, spelled with three Ts." He explained, "They can never figure out that that means."

Q. On "The Tonight Show" last week, I was a little surprised when you named "Kill Bill, Volume 2" as the best film of the year so far. I thought it was exemplary in lots of ways, but I'm not sure that it really taught me anything about real life or real people.

To understand the special gift of John Frankenheimer, it is better to start with his stories instead of his movies. Yes, he made some of the most distinctive films of his time (and began and ended as one of the most gifted directors of drama on television) but the films were mostly serious, and Frankenheimer was a very funny man.

In Life magazine this month she looks like a sleek blond goddess, her lips parted to nibble on a flower. At breakfast the other day, though, Mariel Hemingway looked more like a kid sister you were meeting at the Palm Court of the Plaza between trains.

If this were a scene in a movie, you'd know right away that it was the scene about the actress' last day in town. Jacqueline Bisset's two-room suite at the Sheraton Plaza was scattered with props for her departure. The bedroom floor was lined with trunks and suitcases, their lids tilted open, clothes tumbling out of them. Leaning against the wall in the living room was one of those big cartoonist's caricatures showing Jackie with a giant head balanced on top of a tiny body. It said, "Good Luck, Jackie!" and it was signed by all the members of the cast and crew of her latest film.

"You're gonna think this is crazy," Cliff Robertson was saying, "but I think the Libertarian Party has the right idea. There ought to be a place on the ballot where you could vote for None of the Above. Then maybe in November the parties would have to go back and nominate somebody else . . ." He grinned wickedly at the notion. This was the other night at O'Rourke's, where he's settled into the corner of a booth after a flight from San Francisco. He was in town to talk about his new movie, "Obsession," but the conversation turned into a debriefing about the Democratic primaries. Here it was August and he was STILL for Mo Udall.